Ever
since Maggie died in April I have been wondering why Britain’s first female
Prime Minister polarised people so much. You either love her or you hate her!
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| Dressed up as Maggie at a the Street Party fancy dress comp |
I
grew up in Thatcher’s Britain. I lived in her shadow not knowing anything else
until her demise in the nineties and her recent death has inspired me to
find out more of the leader that ruled the country of my childhood.
I
must admit that my older sisters hated her with an absolute passion but as I
grew up I couldn't really understand why they found her so abhorrent while she
continued to win election after election.
Depending
on who you talked to, Thatcher’s rampage though Britain’s manufacturing sector
either destroyed the country for good for or gave it the clean out (read
“modernisation”) that it had to have.
Thatcher’s
closing of the collieries in the north of England, an act that that many people
say that the area never really recovered from. Without a proper plan to transition
from an area that dug things out of the ground to a region was a part of the innovation
revolution, it has become a place left behind from the modern day knowledge economy.
Rates of chronic employment remain high in the north east due to low economic
growth in areas such as construction as well as the decline in apprenticeships
and other modes of capacity building.
Another
big criticism of Thatcher’s selling off of public housing.
While
allowing people to own their own homes is a great policy, encouraging people to
buy overvalued properties isn’t such a wise move and according to an investigation
by The Daily Mirror 80% of these council flats have ended up being rented out by
private landlords.
What
also happened was that the properties that were sold in the North of the
country were worth much less than the houses in the more prosperous south.
It
seems that the policy of making property ownership more accessible has not
really benefited subsequent generations in Britain and we are seeing that the
rich continue to be in control of the property market and cheaper social housing
has become harder to find as they've been sold off. But I guess this policy was developed to help
the aspirational working class at the expense of those who don’t have the means
to own their own home.
But
Thatcher’s changes weren’t just limited to the housing market.
Like
any good Conservative, Thatcher believed in small government and this included
reducing the number of rules and regulations that the financial sector had to
follow. For example, this meant that building societies were given greater
freedom for to provide mortgage services and banks were now also allowed more
freedom to merge and acquire new businesses that provided financial services
such as stockbroking and insurance. The market was also opened up to foreign
investors and businesses.
While
it meant that the sector was allowed to grow and develop, it also meant that
the financial industry saw phenomenal growth as the same time as being more
susceptible downturns in the market as we saw with the Global Financial Crisis.
She
was also an amazing political tactician. In a conversation with Radio National
Broadcaster and ex Liberal Senator Amanda Vanstone, David Burchell describes
her as an essay in hatred in politics and how to present your opponents with a
set of issues that they don’t know how to handle. She had the ability to not
only bring great strength to her own cause but to also weaken the cause of her
political opponents.
In
1979, Britain Labour was in a state of flux – wedged between the traditional values
of the Union Movement and the need to move with the times. But when Thatcher
came to power, it gave them someone to hate and having such a clear enemy to
focus on seemed to lead them down a path of self destruction.
Struggling
with issues such as immigration, defence and what it meant to be British, the
party imploded and proceeded to take 20 years to regroup.
Burchell
argues that Thatcher didn’t set out to destroy the Labour Party but by
developing a set of “modernising” policies that the Labour Party couldn’t
create viable alternatives for, they were soon driven in to a corner to be perceived
as the bastions of “anti – modernisation”.
Thatcher
showed how easy it was to divide her opponents by pursing a set of clear set of
ideas and how to use political hatred to her advantage. Labour was so hell bent
on hating Thatcher that they became irrational and unable to develop policy
alternatives.
I
could go on about her record divided Britain and making it country that focuses
on the individual pursuit of wealth at all costs. In her death I hope she may rest
in peace and that we may learn from her mistakes and continue to work for the
common good so that no one may be left behind.
